Abstract
Lazarus taxa are those clades for which fossil species were the only taxa known until surviving members were discovered much later, usually in relict habitats. The most famous of Lazarus taxa are the fishes of the Actinistia, commonly known as coelacanths (a name referring to the first described species, the Permian Coelacanthus granulatus Agassiz, 1839). At first known from a diversity of fossil species spanning the Devonian to Cretaceous, the lineage was believed extinct until the first living species, Latimeria chalumnae Smith, 1939, was trawled and discovered in 1938 off the coast of South Africa (Smith, 1939). A second living species was discovered around Sulawesi in 1997 (Pouyaud et al., 1999).
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